Position in chronology
DP 140
About this tablet
This is an administrative barley-ration list from the temple household of the god Ningirsu at Girsu (modern Tello), part of the Early Dynastic III archive associated with the official En-iggal, who served as 'nubanda' (steward/general administrator) under the rulers of Lagash. It records numbers of workers — laborers, boatmen, a leather-worker, carpenters, and porters — grouped under named overseers, each entitled to fixed grain allotments measured in barig (a dry-volume unit). Tablets like this one are the bureaucratic backbone of one of the world's earliest known institutional economies, showing how a Sumerian temple-state tracked and fed its dependent workforce roughly 4,400 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a payroll record. Sixteen laborers are assigned to the foreman Ur-šerda; eighteen more to Inim-du; fifteen to a man named U-U. There are four boatmen. A leather-worker gets two barig of barley, a carpenter also gets two barig, and other carpenters receive three barig each. Fifteen more workers are listed under Ur-sag, who is head of the porters. The whole tally was drawn up under the authority of En-iggal, the estate's chief administrator, as an official barley-ration tablet belonging to the god Ningirsu's household — the record has now been written out and closed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine16 men: Ur-šerda. 18: Inim-du. 15: U₂-U₂. 4: boatmen. 1 leather-worker: 2 barig. 1 carpenter: 2 barig. 3 barig each: carpenters. 15: Ur-sag. Foreman of the porters (il₂-workers). En-iggal, the nubanda (administrator). Tablet of barley rations of Ningirsu — he wrote (it) out. 1.
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(u@c) 6(asz@c) lu2 ur-szer7-da 2(u@c) la2 2(asz@c) inim-du11 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) U2-U2 4(asz@c) ma2-lah5 1(asz@c) ad-kup4 2(barig@c) 1(asz@c) nagar 2(barig@c) 3(barig@c) kesz3-ta nagar 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) ur-sag ugula il2-ne en-ig-gal nu-banda3 dub sze-ba nin-gir2-su-ka-ta e-ta-sar 1(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 140. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P220790) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.